NASA HATE CRIMES, II

On 15 October 2003 Chinese taikonaut Yang Liwei accomplished 14
Earth orbits in his Shenzhou-5 space capsule. The Peoples
Republic of China declared a moon base within ten years.
President Bush the Lesser's handlers went bonkers! The US would
return to the moon, establish a permanent habitation, and declare
Luna United Nations privileges just like Tuvalu. American
military advisors would follow forthwith. Anybody wishing to
visit thereafter could apply for a visa - locally - having placed
full deportation fees in Bank of America escrow prior to arrival.

Vital political messages like having an educator (kindergarten
teacher) and a gay American Chinese on the first mission were
facile. Children's voluntary donations would place a (slightly
used, from the Alabama Supreme Court's rotunda) 5300 pound Ten
Commandments monument on the lunar maria. The nuisance physical
reality of soft landing a huge bunch of stuff plus survivable
people on the moon was rather more noisome. NASA and the Space
Scuttle... ha ha ha! Did anybody just wet their trousers while
spraying Jolt Cola through their noses all over their display?

The new Department of Outworld Affairs requisitioned (national
security!) all two dozen remaining NASA engineers. It turned its
back on 23,000 NASA bureaucrats in Houston as it built its own
$3700 million DOA complex in an otherwise expendable Dallas
suburb. It was to be 24-7 union construction! Overtime
billings for studies were brutal as the newly christened
Interplanetary Brotherhood of Teamsters abandoned Democrats
nationwide. Space City, Texas would arise from Lancaster, Texas
and its 33.6% Caucasian White Trash eminent domain ashes.

With almost no money allocated toward engineering concerns
unallied with political patronage, certain design expediencies
were implicit for the DOA moon base and its transshipment. A
quick search of Amazon.com disclosed no heavy lifters or moon
bases, nor did The Sharper Image help. DOA engineers finally
opened an account on E-Bay and bought a few surplus Saturn MLV-V-3
boosters from NASA for $0.03 on the dollar. Three Space
Scuttle liquid engines sum to 1.125 million pounds of thrust.
The obsolete Saturn's five F-1A engines summed to 9 million
pounds of liftoff thrust - but they had no recycle value.

Space Scuttle solid fuel boosters are pretty good at 2.6 million
pounds of thrust each. Being 12 feet in diameter, eight of them
would fit around the 33-foot diameter Saturn V with room to
spare. The Department of Outworlder Affairs now had a 29.8
million pound thrust heavy lifter (plus credit for not having
recycle packages on the SSBs). There was no useless 120 tons of
Space Scuttle hogging a pissy 6.3 million pound liftoff thrust to
give a crappy 30 ton net payload. 700 tons payload was bigger
than 30 tonnes. When you think moon colony, think DOA!

Transportation costs left a pittance for financing the moon base
itself. Fannie-Mae and would pick up the slack if none of the
astronauts had ever mortgaged a quonset hut. HUD would chip in
if one of the astronauts was Black. Leakproof, radiation-proof,
total life support, self-powered systems were E-Bay accessible!
The smallest class of nuclear submarine is the NR-1 weighing 400
tonnes fully loaded with a crew of 12. The heavy propulsion
plant and underwater whatnots could be traded for a water cargo.
That, along with a bilge of military MRE rations, was all a moon
base crew needed to breathe (electrolysis of the water to oxygen)
and function indefinitely. All the compartments already had
pressure bulkheads and hatches. Pressure-sealed toilets were
standard equipment (and there was no lunar EPA to make loud
noises about holding tank black water dumps). Add external
airlocks and Bob's your uncle.

The whole thing could be done in three flights: Boost a modified
NR-1 nuclear sub and miscellaneous supplies into Earth orbit.
Thermal considerations (120°C days and -170°C nights) mandate
burying the thing under a few feet of insulating lunar regolith;
radiation demands a deeper dig. Explosives dig the hole;
Caterpillar donates a self-contained tractor (tanks of liquid
oxygen, diesel, and water. Oxidizer, fuel, and coolant working
fluid inject into each internal combustion cylinder) for
placement and the backfill. Boost the thruster packages for
lunar insertion and landing. Assemble, travel, land. The first
Loonie astronaut to wonder what in Hell they are doing there goes
out the airlock wearing only his skivvies.

We are not quite finished! Anybody familiar with submariners
enduring their 6-month submerged missions knows that certain
social accommodations materialize in response to hot bunking and
testosterone-fired evolutionary pressures. A boomer can set sail
with up to 150 crew, returning a half-year later with 75 couples.

"Space City... San Francisco Lunar Base has landed! It is one
small step for a man... heck, everybody is mincing around."